


match point

by sevenfoxes



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types
Genre: (that i missed the posting deadline for), F/M, Slow Burn, Yuletide Treat, space sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:29:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They gave us <i>condoms?</i>” Beth hears Martinez ask Beck over her shoulder.  “Holy shit, <i>a lot</i> of condoms.”  Martinez holds up a handful of foil packets and mimes shoving them into his flight suit.</p><p>Beck is a stone cold bastard because he doesn’t even look up from his data pad when he says, flatly, “Standard issue with any med bay.”</p><p>“Probably worried about the <i>promiscuous</i> tendencies of the singletons on this Martian booze cruise,” Martinez quips, looking at Beck pointedly.  “You know, a little million-mile high club action for those of us nursing terrible cru--”</p><p>Watney thumps his elbow into Martinez’s stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	match point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/gifts).



> I saw you pop up in the yuletide pitchhits and thought, YAS, BECK AND JOHANSSEN ARE MY JAM AND I WANT ALL THE STRANGE, AWKWARD REPRESSED FLIRTING HUMANLY POSSIBLE. So I wrote a treat for the first time ever and then officially missed the deadline to post it by like TWENTY MINUTES. **Perfect**. (ETA: Oops, didn't know about Madness.)
> 
> This was written supppper quickly (aka two days), so I apologize for any stupid mistakes. I know considerably less than Weir about space travel.
> 
> I have not yet read the book, so the chance that this is canon-compliant with the books is pretty non-existent. So I’m very sorry if I screw up something that you liked from the book. I’m also not sure how movie compliant it is seeing that all we got was helmet kissing and space babies on Earth, but I _had_ to write them getting teased relentlessly by Martinez and Watney. For science.
> 
> Happy yuletide!

Most the Ares III crew have known each other for years before they are officially selected for the mission. Martinez makes a lot of jokes about NASA starting to feel like a long-term dating service; the pool of successful applicants to the program - particularly to the flight candidate pool - is relatively small, and for deep space missions like the Ares program, potential crew members are required to undergo a rigorous personality assessment, particularly in regards to inter-team dynamics.

(“Jesus,” Martinez says one day in the mess, “it took me less time to date and marry my wife.”)

Basically: when you’re forced to live in a metal tube under stressful conditions with the same people for two years while fifty million miles from home on a good day, you better make sure they get along.

Chris has already met most of the team before he’s accepted into the Ares pre-program, and the other members of the pool have known each other for years, either through military service or through various NASA programs.

The only outlier is Johanssen.

The first year of the selection and training process is grueling. They start with four potential system operators in the pool, none of whom are Johanssen. They throw her into the mix when Kostas’s wife is diagnosed with cancer and he elects to leave the program early on. Johanssen’s spent significantly less time in NASA than any of the other recruits, but she’s blazingly smart and quickly develops a strong rapport with most of the other Ares III hopefuls.

Chris likes her almost instantly, which he begrudgingly admits is strange for him. Lewis calls him a slow-burn, but he knows what people think of him: he’s hard to get to know. He’s cordial with people, but it usually takes him a while to warm to them. Honestly, he isn’t sure why he likes her so much so quickly, he just does.

(Lie. But he’s a goddamn professional, and he’s worked hard to get where he is, despite the media’s insinuations. Pretty boy son of a Senator with presidential aspirations gets sent to Mars sells papers a lot better than Yale educated MD and NASA veteran works really fucking hard and earns a spot on the Ares III crew. He doesn’t need his ego stroked; he’s worked hard and accomplished a lot, but sometimes the things said about him gets under his skin.)

By month nine, they’re down to two SyOps potentials after Tucker is disqualified by the psychologists for what looks like an undiagnosed depressive issue, and Symholder gets pregnant after a short leave, which takes her out of contention.

In the official documentation that is finally declassified after the successful return of Ares VII, the final report on Johanssen lists her immediate acceptance by the core members of the team, particularly Beck and Lewis, as one of the deciding factors in her selection for the Ares III mission. (That and the fact that she basically designed the Hermes operating system. Yeah, that had been a pretty easy call.)

“See, even then they knew you two were going to fuck in space,” Martinez says, leaning down to coo at Chris’s newborn son.

“First off, don’t say that shit in front of my kid,” Beth groans. She motions to Chris, who gently transfers Marcus from his arms to hers; it’s been a couple hours and he’s due for another feeding. As soon as he hands off Marcus, Rose comes racing around the corner and throws herself at Chris’s legs. “Second, technically speaking, it would have held just as true for Lewis.”

Martinez shrugs and waggles an eyebrow at Chris. “That would have been just as great.”

 

* * *

 

Training for the Ares III mission after candidate selection takes two years, three months and seventeen days. It’s a lot of physical training, but the psychological shit is a hell of a lot worse. NASA has a team of nearly sixteen psychologists working with the crew, poking and prodding to make sure they don’t snap in space and kill everyone.

Or something.

“I swear, if I have to answer one more question about my fucking childhood,” Beth complains to Beck over the terrible food they serve in the mess. At this stage of training, they’ve moved the crew into the barracks, and everyone is getting a bit antsy with the restricted movement and freedom. It’s strange to think that in less than six months, they’ll be floating in space together on their way to Mars. “I’m not sure how my reaction to my dog dying in sixth grade has any bearing on my ability to hardcode Vogel’s telemetry upgrades, but at this point, I’m really sick to death about talking about it.”

Beck laughs and shoves more of what NASA is choosing to call beef stroganoff into his mouth.

Beth wonders quietly what the brain pokers get after Beck about. Maybe daddy issues? His family is as close to an American political dynasty as you get, and if there’s one thing Beth understands, it’s just how fucked up American politics is. Especially on the East Coast. Beck doesn’t talk much about his family, but she knows he has two older brothers and a younger sister, and that his father has formed an exploratory committee about running in the next presidential election.

“You ever have a dog that died?” Beth asks instead.

“Nope. My mother was allergic to everything. My sister had the meanest budgie alive though,” Chris says. “Then one day Sam snuck into Lily’s room and opened the cage up, and the dumb thing flew straight into a window and broke its neck. My sister spent an entire week sobbing.”

Beth grimaces. “Yeah, it’s shit like that that makes me happy I was an only child.”

“If only.” His voice is filled with an affection that counters the words, though.

“You gonna eat that?” Beth asks pointing her fork at his brownie.

Beck sighs dramatically, then grins as he slides the brownie across the table. “Anything for you, Johanssen.”

 

* * *

 

The one thing they don’t tell you is that space, while incredible, is also boring as hell. It’s a black void with a bunch of distance pinpricks of light. A lot of nothingness. Nothingness that can kill you, nothingness that can be cool as shit when you actually reach something worth exploring, but a lot of boring nothingness in transit. For the first month, it’s thrilling, the idea of going into the unknown, but six weeks in, Beth has started to go a little stir-crazy.

(There’s only so many laps you want to do on a treadmill.)

The Hermes is a marvel of technology. Although the crew is needed for many tasks that aren’t automated, the ship in many ways flies itself. Beth spent the better part of her twenties designing the operating system that is keeping them alive, and she’s goddamn proud of it. But her brilliance also means that the ship is a self-sustaining piece of badass hardware, so most of her work is low-level maintenance checks until they reach the halfway point of their trip and she begins running practice deceleration and orbit maneuvers with Martinez and Lewis.

So basically, it’s a lot of waiting for the majority of the crew (Beck, Watney and Vogel have some ongoing experiments that keep them occupied), which leaves them a hell of a lot of time outside of their daily chores.

Which usually results in what’s happening right now: Watney, Martinez and Beth going to bug the shit out of Beck. 

It’s become a sport of sorts: who can make Beck lose his shit first. Or what constitutes Beck losing his shit, the symptoms of which start at deep sighing and end at quiet, level-voiced threats of prostate exams.

Today, Beck is running through his monthly supply check of the infirmary. Thankfully, they haven’t used many supplies as far as Beth can tell, so it’s not like they’re interrupting anything of real importance.

Beth perches on the examination table as Martinez pokes through a few drawers and Watney plays with the tongue depressors. Beck elects to ignore them mostly, tapping into his data pad, only looking up occasionally to sneak a few peeks at her.

“They gave us _condoms?_ ” Beth hears Martinez ask Beck over her shoulder. “Holy shit, _a lot_ of condoms.” Martinez holds up a handful of foil packets and mimes shoving them into his flight suit.

Beck is a stone cold bastard because he doesn’t even look up from his data pad when he says, flatly, “Standard issue with any med bay.”

“Probably worried about the _promiscuous_ tendencies of the singletons on this Martian booze cruise,” Martinez quips, looking at Beck pointedly. “You know, a little million-mile high club action for those of us nursing terrible cru--”

Watney thumps his elbow into Martinez’s stomach.

And wow, Martinez hits a nerve because Beck actually looks _flustered_. Beth didn’t think she’d see the day. Beck has a few modes: cool, laid back, collected, unperturbed, calm. Nothing really approaching flustered as far as Beth can tell.

It’s kind of cute.

( _Cute?_ Ugh, sometimes Beth really does feel like the youngest member of the crew. Especially with the way she’s been acting around Beck lately.)

“Docs probably saw the big ‘ol doe eyes you were giving Watney back on Earth and thought it was better to be safe than sorry,” Beth teases Martinez, who gives her the finger. Martinez absolutely adores his wife beyond all reason, which is partially why it’s so much fun poking at his epic bromance with Watney. Watney had been his best man at the wedding, and was godfather to Martinez’s son.

“Hey, hey,” Watney laughs, holding his hand palm out to the group of them. “I have some _standards_ , okay?”

Martinez scrunches up his face and rolls his eyes. “Please. Like you don’t want a piece of this.”

Beck lets out a deep, beleaguered sigh.

One point for Martinez.

 

* * *

 

SOP for the first six months of the mission has mandated weekly physicals. All crew members have done multiple space missions before and had no adverse reactions to zero gravity or artificial atmosphere, but deep space is a different ballgame. Between the radiation and sub-optimal diet, sustained space flight is risky. The physicals also help Chris assess the mental state of the crew and to identify any potential risks.

(He’s not unaware of how hard he’s attempting to put a professional slant on something that has begun to feel deeply unprofessional with Johanssen. He’s a doctor - her flight surgeon - and that will always come first, but the fact that the other crew members have begun to notice… _things_ is disturbing to him. He needs to get his shit together.)

“You feeling all right?” Chris asks Johanssen as he slips the needle out of her vein. She’s always been a bit nervous around needles, so he tries to be as cautious as possible when collecting samples. 

(Lewis holds her arm out like she enjoys being jabbed, but she’s a bit of an odd duck. Same as Martinez, who demands lollipops every time he comes in just to be obnoxious.)

“Yeah,” Johanssen says, though she doesn’t sound convincing. Sound carries surprisingly well in the crew cabins and he’d heard her retching pretty hard last night. He’d considered going to see if she was all right before the noises had quieted down finally, but he made a note to speak with her about it during their appointment today.

“Didn’t sound that way last night,” he says. She looks a little shocked that he heard her, but recovers quickly. “If you need something for the motion sickness, let me know.” The crew cabins are on a gravity deck, and even Chris has had a few issues with the spinning. The lights on the ship help the eyes track movement, so while it doesn’t feel like you’re spinning when you’re on them, one look out a porthole is enough to make Chris a little queasy at times.

Johanssen gives him a little half-grin. “Nah. I’m okay. We’ve just got to get Vogel off mess duty. I can’t deal with his cooking.”

“Yeah, German cuisine.” He grimaces. “I didn’t know you could make space food worse. I was wrong.”

When she doesn’t answer, he peers up and notices that she is no longer looking at him. When he tracks his eyes down to where she’s looking, he finally notices that he’s been running his thumb over her wrist gently.

 

* * *

 

The Hermes is a palace compared to the HAB. Other than the commodes, there’s absolutely no privacy. The bunks are stacked three to a wall. Watney, Martinez, and Vogel on one side; Beck, Johanssen, and Lewis on the other.

Chris has always been a light sleeper with insomniatic tendencies. Vogel and Johanssen sleep like the dead, which is great for them, not so great for the other four who are currently listening to Johanssen snore like a chainsaw from their bunks.

“How does someone that small make that much _noise_? She sounds like the MAV taking off,” Martinez whispers, laughing when Johanssen snuffles. “Better get used to listening to some snoring, Beck.”

Before he realizes it’s a not-so-veiled dig, Chris says, “She doesn’t snore on the ship. Probably an atmospheric anomaly.” 

Martinez’s mouth drops open and only grows wider with a smile as he ducks his head out the side of his bunk to look at Watney with the kind of unsuppressed glee that makes Beck want to slam his head off the side of the HAB. “You hear that? She doesn’t snore on ship. Now, Dr. Beck, how would one know of a certain Beth Johanssen’s sleeping habits, hmm?”

Chris grits his teeth. “Sleep study.”

(Lie. His cabin is next to hers on the ship and he can pretty much hear everything through the walls. Most nights, he found the noises of her preparing to sleeping and coding when she couldn’t to be calming.)

“Did that sleep study happen to take place in your bunk?” That’s Watney, the little shit.

“Would everyone kindly shut the fuck up and go to sleep?” Lewis sighs, flipping over in her bunk beneath him.

 

* * *

 

They’ve been back on the Hermes for a little under two weeks. The ship feels twenty times as empty without Watney, the corridors a little longer and a lot quieter. No one wants to talk about it; the loss feels like a festering wound that will never heal. It’s tough to see his name on the medical templates in Chris’s records, tougher to leave those logs empty. 

They’ve all had traumatic loss training. They all know how to sink themselves into tasks, how to compartmentalize in order to focus. But knowing is different than doing, than feeling. They all lost a friend. A brother.

Chris makes twice-weekly check-ins part of the medical SOP for the first two months of the trip back home. Martinez is always the quietest of them, and Chris finds himself desperately missing the smartass Martinez who would spend his days finding new and exciting ways of driving Chris completely insane.

Lewis and Martinez take Watney’s death the hardest, Chris writes up in his reports. While Martinez’s reaction is mostly sorrow, Lewis’s is grounded in a deep guilt that she is extremely hesitant to discuss.

Johanssen misses her first check of the week, so Chris has to go track her down. She begrudgingly agrees to see him after she finishes running diagnostics on the reactor’s redundant cooling system. 

Three hours later, she’s sitting on the examination table, her legs crossed underneath her. She doesn’t offer up any information, responding to Chris’s yes and no questions lethargically. He can tell that she’s lost a little weight, and there are dark rings under her eyes.

“Have you been sleeping properly?” Chris asks her.

“Yeah.” Johanssen is the world’s worst liar, and even if Chris’s cabin wasn’t next to hers and he couldn’t hear her pacing at night, he’d know a lie from her a mile away.

(Strange, now that he thinks about it. How they build their own time out in space, their own day and night. They are surrounded by nothing but night.)

“I can give you something to help you sleep,” he tells her. He wants to share with her that she’s not the only one having trouble with it, that Martinez required some very strong sleep aids the first week they were back on the ship, but it’s not his information to share.

“Nah,” she answers. “Makes me groggy. Don’t even work half the time.”

“Hey.” He reaches out and grasps the cradle of her elbow, carefully kneading the muscle just above it. Chris worries that he’s overstepped - some people do not like to be touched during periods of heightened emotional stress - but she moves into the pressure, though she doesn’t look at him while she does it. “You need to at least get a couple hours, okay? You’re the brains of the operation, we need you at fighting weight. Otherwise, we’re in Martinez’s hands, and I don’t need to tell you why that’s a scary thought.”

Johanssen lets out a quiet noise that isn’t quite a laugh and finally looks up at him. “I’ll try.”

Chris holds out hope that she’s following through on her promise when her cabin seems quiet that evening, no muted sounds of her headphones or fingers tapping on keys. He’s finishing up an entry in his journal when there’s a quiet knock on his door. 

“Come in,” he says, sitting up in bed, his sheets pooling around his waist.

“Hey,” Johanssen says, slipping in the door before it shuts behind her with a hiss. She’s in her pajamas and her hair is loose and a little curly from being rubbed against her pillow, the way it typically looks in the morning, which lets him know that she’s probably been trying to sleep.

“Hey.”

Johanssen is fidgety. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Do you want to--” Chris slides a bit further into his bunk and motions to the space beside him. It’s only a few steps between the door and the bed, so it takes her less than a second to climb up and plop down beside him. Normally, she’s cross her legs, but instead, she draws her knees up to her chest up and wraps her arms around them like she’s holding on for dear life.

(He’s had this dream a couple times in the past year. Even so, it’s strange to have Johanssen on his bed.)

She turns her head so her cheek is resting against the top of her thigh. “I keep having this dream,” Johanssen says. “I keep hearing that scream. Mark’s scream as that piece of debris hit him. Him out there, dying alone.” Her voice gets rough for a second, like she’s trying to hold off crying. In the years he’s known her, he’s only seen her cry a handful of time, usually out of exhaustion rather than sadness or frustration. “I just get stuck in that moment, trying to find him and seeing nothing but that fucking storm.” She takes a deep breath. “The worst ones are where I find him. Where he walks out of the storm and up onto the MAV. And then I wake up and know it isn’t real. I go down to the mess and see his name on the touchscreen and know that he’s dead.”

“It’s normal,” Chris says, hoping to offer her a little comfort. “We’re so task-oriented most of the waking day that it’s the way the subconscious tries to work through grief.” He cringes at himself. He sounds like a goddamn textbook. “It will pass, I promise.” Chris reaches out and touches her cheek gently, her eyes closing as his fingertips brush over her soft skin.

When she leans over, Chris freezes, sucking in a quick breath before Johanssen presses her lips against his gently. It’s a chaste kiss, their lips slotting together a little wetly because she’d licked them before pressing her mouth to his. It lasts for a few seconds before Johanssen pulls back, her eyes wide and shocked like she’s surprised at herself.

There’s also a deep blush rising over her cheekbones. Her mouth opens like she’s about to apologize, then slams shut again.

He’s wanted to kiss Johanssen for ages, and the part of him that isn’t a good guy knows that if he were to lean back over and kiss her, she’d let him. But she’s grieving like he is, and he’s not a bastard, so he doesn’t, and instead smiles and asks, “You want to crash here tonight?” 

The truth is that he’s been sleeping poorly too, replaying the last few years in his head over and over, thinking about how close they all came to death out there. 

(Mostly, he thinks about how, like Watney, he has no one back home. Family, but no one to belong to.)

Johanssen nods and slides down beside him, her toes thumping into the upper part of his Tibia as they both turn onto their sides under the sheets to face each other. He doesn’t try to hold or touch her, just lets her rack out beside him 

(She falls asleep first, her breathing going deep and even within a couple minutes of her eyes closing. Chris has the best night of sleep he’s had in months.)

 

* * *

 

“Beck?” Johanssen calls into the med bay, her voice echoing in the cavernous space. After Henderson’s video message, Chris retreated back to the med bay. He likes this space, the clean walls and the calmness inside of them. It’s his. It’s also one of the few rooms on the gravity deck that doesn’t have portholes. It’s easier to pretend here. A place to come when he needs to forget what lies outside of the metal and carbon. A place to forget space.

“Hey,” she says, stooping down to look him in the eye. Chris is on the floor, his back resting against the doors of the drug cabinets. When he attempts to smile back, she tips over a bit, landing on her ass beside him so they’re shoulder to shoulder.

After a moment of silence, she taps her finger against the side of his head and asks, “What’s going on in there?”

(Guilt. Guilt guilt guilt.)

“I told the commander that Mark was dead,” Chris explains, trying to keep his voice calm and level. “I did. I told her to stop looking, that he was dead.”

“Jesus, Chris,” Johannsen says, and her face is filled with such a profound empathy that Chris finds himself forced to look away from her. “Our MAV was tipping over, his suit had gone offline. We could have searched for hours and not found him in that storm. What I do know is that if we had stayed, if you hadn't made her come back to the ship, the MAV would have tipped over and we'd all be down there, starving to death. It was a tough decision, but the right one.”

He knows objectively that Watney’s situation isn’t his fault in the same way that it’s not Lewis’s fault. He knows that the MAV would have tipped over, that not a single person would have taken their situation and made a different call based on the information they were given.

But he also knows what lies ahead for Watney in excruciating detail.

(He also doesn’t think about how the HAB had a small pack of barbiturates and potassium chloride hidden in a lab cabinet, which would have allowed Chris to painlessly euthanize the crew on planet if needed, if the MAV had tipped and they had no way of returning to The Hermes.)

“I know,” he says. “Doesn’t make it feel any better.”

He’s shocked when Johanssen scoops up his hand and slides her fingers between his, giving his palm a squeeze. She sits with him for another hour in silence, listening to the shift and growl of the ship as it takes them farther and farther away from Watney.

(Later, it strikes Chris that it's one of the few times he's heard Johannsen call him anything other than Beck.)

 

* * *

 

Her parents don’t understand it.

“Beth,” her father says, his eyes filled with the same muted terror and pride they’d had when she’d told him about being selected for the mission over three years ago, “why are you doing this? Honey, they’ll figure something out to help him. I know you want to do more, but--”

It’s difficult to explain to her parents because she herself doesn’t quite know when the crew stopped being teammates and started being _family_. Chris more than that, but the thought scares her, so she tends not to linger on it.

The decision hadn’t been difficult at all, the vote little more than an afterthought. None of them were leaving Watney behind.

She’d looked at Chris, at Lewis and Martinez and Vogel and thought, _I’d die for every one of you_.

 

* * *

 

Watney spends the better part of a week in the med bay after his rescue. The crew takes turns watching over him, though Chris spends the better part of his day in the med bay anyway, so the rest of them act mostly as a relief crew when Chris needs to take a break. Lewis is a fixture in the med bay the first few days, but finally relaxes when Watney tells her to bugger off and stop hovering.

Watney is shockingly thin and the state of his body makes Beth cry when she’s not in front of the others. The sores are painful, and he has a terrible case of scurvy that Chris is treating with high doses of vitamin C. The MAV launch has also left terrible bruising on this ribs.

He sleeps a lot, but spends most of his time with Beth recounting his days alone on Mars. She’s pleased to find the planet hasn’t stolen his spirit; she’s always known how strong Watney is, but seeing a man who should be dead ten times over joke and smile with her is a reminder of what the human spirit is capable of.

But mostly, she’s really entertained by how ecstatic he is about ketchup again. (One simple request to the mess from Watney: no potatoes or potato byproducts.)

Tonight, Watney’s feeling particularly punchy when she comes in to relieve Vogel for the night shift. “Please tell me that you and Beck finally sealed the deal,” he says with a dark grin.

“What?” Beth says. She can feel the blush starting and is irritated by her body’s betrayal.

“Christ, you’ve been gone more than a year and a half and you two still haven’t figured it out? Martinez must be losing his mind. I’m sorry I missed it.” Tonight, Lewis made Watney’s favourite - breakfast for dinner: waffles with blueberry jam - and he’s currently shoving giant forkfuls into his mouth in between words. “Seriously. I’m surprised he hasn’t trapped you two in an air lock.”

They’ve shared a bed, but they haven’t done anything more than kiss. And even then, it was only once, the time she had a slow meltdown and came on to him in his bed. Like a weirdo. And he hadn’t taken her up on the offer, nor instigated anything after beyond the weird flirtation she’s been feeling for as long as they’ve known each other. “Listen, I don’t think so, okay? Beck is… it’s just complicated.”

Watney smiles like he’s hanging on to a particularly juicy secret. “You two are so obnoxious. Johanssen, he’s the flight surgeon. Most likely he’s just stuck on his silly sense of duty. He’s never going to make the first move. That’s just what you get when you try to land Yale boys with an unhealthy attachment to the Hippocratic oath. Repression is real, and it breeds in Connecticut.”

“Watney,” Beth scolds.

Watney leans back against the pillow. “Listen, okay? I’m not going to pretend like getting stranded on a planet fifty odd million miles away from any other living human has given me any sort of insight on the human condition, because it hasn’t. I’m not going to tell you to seize the day or that life is short or any other trite bullshit, because listening to disco music for a year and a half has both resulted in my brain being turned to mush as well as the realization that there are fates worse than death, and they all involve ABBA on repeat. That being said, I do know this: he’s crazy about you, and neither of you have gotten laid in like, what, three years? At least.”

Johanssen’s breath catches in her throat.

He screws up his face and sighs. “Also, your shit really stinks. What the fuck were you eating?”

 

* * *

 

So Beth makes the first move. 

(AGAIN, she will later point out to Chris numerous times when he’s trying to tell some revisionist tale of how he instigated their relationship. Though she appreciates Chris’s chivalry in not taking advantage of her in a vulnerable moment.)

“Uh,” Chris says when Beth pulls back, her mouth tingly and warm. She can taste the coffee he’d been drinking when she’d walked up to him in the med bay, pushed him back against the table and kissed him.

(He’d been surprised at first, his mouth falling open in shock, but he’d recovered quickly, pushing his body off the table and into hers. He’d felt so good, a solid warmth against her, his hands coming up to bracket her hips.)

“You’re coming to my bunk at lights out,” Beth says, and twists Chris’s sweater in her palm. She tries to be bold, but she’s more nervous than anything else, even though the look he’s giving her is making her a little wet. Intense and dark, like if she told him to ditch chores and come back to her bunk now, he would, even though she know it’d be killing him inside.

“Okay,” Chris says with an enthusiastic nod, leaning down to kiss her roughly.

 

* * *

 

“Nice hickey,” Watney says to Chris the next morning. Chris had yanked the neck of his sweater up as high as he could, but Beth had been less than considerate the night before with her teeth.

(Though she’d been forced to pull on a turtleneck that morning as well.)

“Shut up. It’s been like, what, two years since your last prostate exam?” 

“Match point, Watney!” Watney laughs and closes his eyes. “You gotta name one of your kids after me, okay?”

 

* * *

 

“We’re closing in on a million miles. Only a couple hours left.”

Chris reaches back between his shoulder blades and pulls his t-shirt over his head. He throws it in the direction of the chair in his room and misses horribly. “What is with you and this number?”

Beth grins. “Where’s your adventurous spirit? Don’t want to join the million-mile high club?”

Truth be told, he’s not particularly gone on the idea one way or another. He mostly wants Beth naked and begging in his bed, regardless of the distance to Earth. “Isn’t space sex enough for you?” 

Chris unzips her flight suit slowly, dragging it out in a way that makes her squirm beautifully. It’s times like this where Chris truly laments the years he’s spent waiting to get her here; nothing makes him happier than the dopey look Beth gets on her face when Chris gets his hands on her.

“Hmm, I don’t know. Aldrin and Armstrong’s bromance was strong. I bet you there were some handies on Apollo 11. Plain ol’ space sex doesn’t have much of a special feeling, you know? Handies in space: been there, done that.”

Chris slips his hand into the open spread of her flight suit and into her panties. She’s really, really wet, enough that he can slide his fingers along her slit and into her with almost no resistance. She feels incredible: warm and wet for him. “Jesus, you sound like Martinez.” 

Beth’s face goes flat, which makes Chris suck in a deep, scared breath. “Did you really just compare me to Martinez as you were--” she motions to his hand, currently two fingers deep in her.

“No?”

“That’s what I thought.” She shimmies until the shoulders of her suit slide down, acres of beautiful skin finally bare. He leans down to mouth along her collarbone, run his nose along the soft line of her jaw in the way she loves, before leaning up to kiss her, his finger rubbing a slow circle around her clit.

She smiles and taps the condom against his forehead. “One small step for man.”

Chris collapses on top of her, laughing.

 

* * *

 

Rose Johanssen Beck is born the day before the Ares V launch. Seven pounds, three ounces and a week early.

Mark sends them a stuffed Mrs. Potato Head doll and a card that reads:

_I told you so.  
-Watney_


End file.
